The Joke That Launched This Newsletter
"401 Que?" three months in and beyond.
The first thing people notice about the newsletter is the title.
“LOVE the name. So clever,” some of y’all have said.
“Thanks,” I say sheepishly since it’s the one aspect of this Substack that has nothing to do with me. “My sister came up with it.”
A few months ago, she, my wife Daniela and I were having a conversation about our lack of personal finance knowledge growing up, when my sister (Maria, or Yaya if you’re me) quipped something to the effect of, “401K? More like 401 Que?”
It was a silly joke, but we laughed our butts off. It resonated deeply because it encapsulated the experience of being immigrants and children of immigrants navigating a system that seems to keep secrets from you.
That one joke crystallized the concept and spurred me to start this newsletter.
Interviews, Giveaways and more
401 Que? is a labor of love. I didn’t have expectations about an audience or paid subscriptions. I wanted to write about a topic that’s important to me in a sustainable way. I decided to post once a week, which was enough to establish a consistent publishing cadence without taking me away from other stuff I’m working on.
After three months, a little community has started to form. We cracked the 100-subscriber count last week, and some of you have become regular commenters.
This has motivated me to start thinking longer term about the newsletter. Where else do we go? What else can I do?
Interviews
I want to conduct more interviews (like this one). I write about money issues, but I’m not a financial expert. I want to have conversations with financial advisors, entrepreneurs, DEI executives and anyone else doing work that promotes a healthy relationship with personal finance, wealth building and career, especially as they pertain to immigrant communities.
Giveaways
I want to be able to give you cool stuff as I have more of these conversations. Some of the people I’m looking to interview have books, online courses, toolkits and other things that I think y’all would enjoy and benefit from.
What would you like to see?
Those are a couple of my ideas of things I’d like to add to the newsletter, but I’d love to hear from you. What else would you like to see? What do you want? Tell me in the comments!
Yay! Glad to see it taking shape. More interviews like the one you did a bit ago. I liked that! Maybe even non-financial interviews, like people's journeys getting from not knowing financial stuff to figuring it out to achieve some wins.
Congrats on the milestone ! Keep up the good work !